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Reed students win Goldwater scholarships

Two Reed students are among 323 sophomores and juniors selected to receive Goldwaters.

PORTLAND, OR (April 28, 2006) – Reed College students Matthew Strom Borman and Derek A. Oldridge have been awarded prestigious Goldwater scholarships in the amount of $7,500 each to pursue their studies at Reed. Grant D. Meadors, from Lake Oswego, Oregon, received an honorable mention.

They were among 323 undergraduate sophomores and juniors selected to receive the scholarships for the 2006-2007 academic year by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Since 1991, twenty-one Reed students have been awarded Goldwater scholarships. Borman, a junior majoring in math from Edina, Minnesota, is studying this spring in the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program. Last summer, he was accepted into the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, which gave him the opportunity to research algebraic-combinatorics with Ken W. Smith at Central Michigan University. He will be at an REU site again this summer – this time at the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five undergraduate colleges, two graduate institutions, and a central organization – to perform research in metric trees under Asuman Aksoy, an expert in the field of functional analysis. Borman plans to earn a Ph.D. in pure mathematics after completing his undergraduate degree.

Oldridge, a double major in Chemistry and Physics from Boise, Idaho, has also been accepted into this summer's REU program. At the University of California, San Diego, Oldridge will work at the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics with Jose Onuchic, co-director of the center. Their research project will involve theoretical and computational studies of protein folding and biochemical reactions in condensed matter. Before the program starts, Oldridge will work on computational quantum mechanical models of the tetra-amido macrocyclic ligand (TAML) oxidant activators that he's been developing in coordination with Reed chemistry professor Alan Shusterman.

The Goldwater scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,081 mathematics, science and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established by Public Law in 1986. The scholarship program honoring Senator Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. It is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.